he security offices were on the sixth floor, behind the toy department, discreetly concealed from view by a fake wall. As vice president of operations, the security division fell under Meredith's supervision, and as she walked past an aisle where shoppers were examining elaborate electric trains and Victorian dollhouses, she wondered grimly whom security had caught stealing that required her to be there. It couldn't be an ordinary shoplifter, because they'd handle that without her, which meant it was probably an employee. Store employees, from executives to salesclerks, were closely watched by the security division. Although shoplifters accounted for eighty percent of the number of thefts from the store, it was employee theft that did the most monetary damage. Unlike shoplifters, who could steal only what they could hide and carry, employees had dozens of opportunities and dozens of methods to steal every day. Last month the security division had caught a salesclerk who'd been issuing bogus credits to friends for false merchandise returns, and the month before a jewelry buyer had been fired for taking $10,000 worth of bribes to buy inferior merchandise from three different suppliers. Meredith always felt as if there was something extraordinarily sordid and sickening about a thief who was also an employee; it was difficult not to feel almost betrayed. Bracing herself, she stopped at a door that said MARK BRADEN, DIRECTOR OF SECURITY AND LOSS PREVENTION and went into the large waiting room that adjoined Mark's office. Two shoplifters, a woman in her twenties and another in her seventies, were seated in the vinyl and aluminum chairs against the wall, under the watchful eye of a uniformed security agent. The younger woman was huddled in her chair with her arms wrapped around her stomach and traces of tears on her cheeks; she looked bedraggled, poor, and terrified. In sharp contrast, the older shoplifter was a picture of cheerful, elegant propriety—an elderly porcelain doll clad in a red and black Chanel suit, sitting erectly in her chair with her handbag propped primly on her knees. "Good morning, my dear," she chirped in her reedy voice when she saw Meredith. "How are you today?"

"I'm fine, Mrs. Fiorenza," Meredith said, stifling her angry frustration as she recognized the elderly lady. Agnes Fiorenza's husband was not only a respected pillar of the community and the father of a state senator, he was also a member of Bancroft's board of directors, which made the entire situation touchy, which in turn was undoubtedly why Meredith had been summoned to security. "How are you?" Meredith asked before she thought better of it.

"I'm very unhappy, Meredith. I've been waiting out here for a half hour, and as I explained to Mr. Braden, I really can't linger. I have to attend a luncheon in honor of Senator Fiorenza in a half hour, and he'll be dreadfully upset if I'm not present. After that, I'm speaking to the Junior League. Do you think you could hasten matters up a bit for me with Mr. Braden?"

"I'll see what I can do," Meredith said, keeping her expression noncommittal as she opened the door to Mark's office. Mark Braden was leaning against the edge of his desk, sipping a cup of steaming coffee and talking to the security agent who'd seen the younger woman actually purloin the items she'd taken.

An attractive, well-built man of forty-five with sandy hair and brown eyes, Braden had been a security specialist in the air force and he took his job at Bancroft's every bit as seriously as he had taken his responsibilities to maintain national security. Meredith not only trusted and respected him, she liked him and that was evident in

her wry smile as she said, "I saw Agnes Fiorenza in the waiting room. She wants me to tell you that you're keeping her from an important luncheon."

Braden held up his free hand in a gesture of helpless disgust and let it fall. "My instructions are to let you deal with the old bat."

"What did she filch this time?"

"A Lieber belt, a Givenchy handbag, and these." He held out a pair of huge, gaudy blue crystal earrings from the costume jewelry section that would have looked bizarre on the diminutive elderly lady.

"How much unused credit does she still have?" Meredith asked, referring to the account her harassed husband had set up with the store to cover his wife's thefts in advance.

"Four hundred dollars. It won't cover it."

"I'll talk to her, but first, could I have a cup of that coffee?" Privately, Meredith was fed up with coddling the old lady while others, like the young woman out there beside her, were prosecuted to the full extent of the law. "I'm going to have the doormen ban Mrs. Fiorenza from the store after this," Meredith decided aloud, knowing full well such an action might incur the wrath of her husband. "What did the younger woman take?"

"An infant's snowsuit, mittens, and a couple of sweaters. She denies it," he said with a fatalistic shrug, handing Meredith her cup of coffee. "We've got her on videotape. Total value of the goods is about two hundred dollars."

Meredith nodded, sipping, wishing to God the bedraggled mother out there had admitted the theft. By denying it, she was forcing the store to prove it—and to prosecute her—in order to protect itself from some future lawsuit for fraudulently detaining her. "Does she have a police record?"

"My contact at the police department says no."

"Would you be willing to drop the charge if she signs a statement admitting the theft?"

"Why the hell should we?"

"For one thing, it's costly to prosecute and she has no prior record. For another, I find it highly distasteful to let Mrs. Fiorenza go away with a scold for stealing designer things she can easily pay for, and at the same time prosecute that woman for stealing warm clothes for her child."

"I'll make you a deal—you ban Fiorenza from the store and I'll let the other one off, provided she'll admit to the theft. Deal?"

"Deal," Meredith said emphatically.

"Bring in the old lady," Mark instructed the security agent.

Mrs. Fiorenza entered the room in a cloud of Joy perfume, all smiles but looking rushed. "Goodness, you took long enough, Mr. Braden."

"Mrs. Fiorenza," Meredith said, taking charge, "you've repeatedly put us all to a great deal of trouble because you insist on taking things from the counters without paying for them first."

"I know I'm troublesome at times, Meredith, but that certainly doesn't justify your using that censorious tone on me."

"Mrs. Fiorenza!" Meredith said, further irritated at being spoken to like an ill-bred child. "People go to jail—for years—for stealing things valued at less than the amount of these—" She gestured to the belt, the handbag, and the earrings. "There's a woman out there in that waiting room who took warm clothes for her baby, and she's in danger of going to jail. But you—you take trifles that you don't need."

"Good heavens, Meredith," Mrs. Fiorenza interrupted, looking appalled. "You can't think I took those earrings for myself! I'm not completely selfish, you know. I do charitable things for people too."

Confused, Meredith hesitated. "You mean you donate things you steal—like those earrings—to charity?"

"Gracious me!" she replied, her china-doll face pulled into a scandalized expression. "What worthwhile charity would accept those earrings? They're atrocious. No, indeed. I took them to give to my maid. She has awful taste. She'll love them. Although, I do think you ought to mention to whoever purchased those earrings for the store that they do nothing to enhance the image of Bancroft's! Goldblatt's, I think, might find them suitable stock, but I can't see why Bancroft's—"

"Mrs. Fiorenza," Meredith interrupted, ignoring the absurd direction the discussion had taken, "I warned you last month that if you were caught shoplifting again, I'd have to tell the doormen to bar you from the store."

"You aren't serious!"

"I am completely serious."

"I am barred from shopping at Bancroft's?"

"Yes."

"This is an outrage."

"I'm sorry."

"My husband is going to hear about this!" she said, but her voice had taken on a timid, pathetic tone.

"He'll hear about it only if you choose to tell him," Meredith said, sensing that the elderly lady's intended threat was filled with more alarm than anger.

Her head lifted proudly, but there was a catch in her voice as she said, "I have no desire to ever shop in this store again. I shall take my business to I. Magnin's. They wouldn't dream of giving an inch of counter space to those awful earrings!"

She picked up the handbag she'd put on the desk a few moments before, patted her soft white hair into place, and departed. Sagging against the wall, Meredith looked at the two men in the room and took a sip of coffee, feeling sad and uneasy—as if she'd just slapped an old woman. After all, her husband did ultimately pay for whatever she was caught stealing, so it wasn't as if Bancroft's lost money—at least, not when they caught her.

After a moment she said to Mark, "Did you notice that she seemed, well, pathetic, somehow?"

"No."

"I suppose it's for her own good," Meredith continued, studying the odd expression on his face. "Who knows, we may have taught her a lesson by handing out a punishment instead of ignoring what she does. Right?"

Braden smiled slowly, as if deeply amused, then, without replying, he picked up the phone and pressed four buttons. "Dan," he said to one of his security agents on the main floor, "Mrs. Fiorenza is on her way down. Stop her and insist that she give you the Lieber belt she has in her purse. Right," he said into the phone, grinning at Meredith's stricken expression, "the same belt you caught her stealing earlier. She just stole it from my desk."

When he hung up, Meredith shook off her stunned chagrin and glanced at her watch, her mind turning to the meeting that was scheduled for that afternoon. "I'll see you in the staff meeting later. Is your status report ready?"

"Yep. My department looks good. Losses are down by an estimated eight percent over last year."

"That's wonderful," she said, and she meant it.

Now, more than ever, Meredith wanted her entire division to shine. Her father's cardiologist was insisting that he either retire from Bancroft's presidency, or, at the very least, take a six-month leave of absence. He'd decided to take a leave of absence, and yesterday he'd met with the board of directors to discuss who should be named interim president while he was on leave. Beyond that, all she knew was that she desperately wanted a chance to fill in for him while he was away. So did at least four of the other executive vice presidents. She'd worked as hard for it—harder—than any of them; not as long as two of them, but with ferocious diligence and indisputable success. Moreover, there had always been a Bancroft in the president's chair, and if she hadn't been born female, Meredith knew the interim presidency would belong to her automatically. Her grandfather had been younger than she when he took over, but he hadn't been hampered by his father's bias against his sex or by a board of directors who had such awesome control over decisions. That last was partly Meredith's fault. She'd been the one who campaigned and fought for Bancroft's expansion into other cities. To do that had required raising enormous amounts of capital, which could be accomplished only by taking Bancroft & Company public—selling shares of its stock on the exchange. Now anyone could buy a share of its stock and each share carried one vote. As a result, the board members were accountable to, and elected by, the public shareholders instead of merely being puppets chosen—or dismissed— by her father. Worse for Meredith, all the board members held large blocks of stock themselves, which they could vote and which gave them even more power. On the good side, many of them were the same twelve men who'd been on Bancroft's board for years; they were friends and business acquaintances of her father's or grandfather's, so they still tended to do as her father suggested.

Meredith needed the six-month term as interim president to prove to her father and to the board that when her father did eventually retire, she could handle the responsibilities of the presidency.

If her father recommended that Meredith be appointed to succeed him while he was on leave of absence, then the directors would surely give their approval. Her father, however, had been infuriatingly noncommittal about his meeting with the board and even about when the board would announce its decision.

Putting her coffee cup down on Mark's desk, Meredith glanced at the tiny snowsuit that had been stolen by the woman in the waiting room, and she felt the same ache of sadness that gripped her whenever she faced the fact that she'd never have a baby of her own. Long ago, however, she'd learned how to hide her emotions from coworkers, and her smile was untroubled as she said, "I'll talk to the other woman on my way out. What's her name?"

Mark told her, and Meredith went into the waiting room. "Mrs. Jordan," she said to the pale young mother who'd stolen the children's garments, "I'm Meredith Bancroft."

"I've seen your picture in the papers," Sandra Jordan retorted. "I know who you are. So what?"

"So, if you continue to deny that you stole those things, the store will have to prosecute you."

So hostile was her expression that if Meredith hadn't known what the woman had taken, and she hadn't seen the glint of frightened tears in her eyes, she might well have abandoned her attempted charity. "Listen to me carefully, Mrs. Jordan, because I'm telling you this out of compassion. Take my advice or take the consequences: If you deny taking those things, and we let you go without prosecuting you and proving you did, you could turn around and sue us for unjustly accusing and detaining you. The store cannot risk such a lawsuit; therefore, if you deny it, we have to go through the entire legal ordeal now that we've detained you. Do you understand me so far? There is a videotape of you stealing children's garments that was filmed by one of the cameras in the ceiling in that department. We can and will produce the tape in court in order to prove not only that you are guilty, but that we are innocent of wrongly accusing you. Are you following me?"

Meredith paused and stared at the young woman's rigid face, unable to tell if she was grasping the lifeline Meredith was offering her.

"Am I supposed to believe that you let shoplifters go so long as they admit they took stuff?" she said, looking dubious and disdainful.

"Are you a shoplifter, Mrs. Jordan?" Meredith countered. "Is that what you are—a common, habitual shoplifter?" Before the woman could strike back verbally, Meredith softened her voice. "Female shoplifters of your age ordinarily take clothes for themselves, or perfume or jewelry. You took winter clothes for a child. The police have no record of any prior arrest on you. I prefer to think you're a mother who acted out of desperation and a need to keep her baby warm."

The young woman, who evidently was more familiar with confronting adversity than compassion, seemed to crumple before Meredith's eyes. Tears rose in her eyes and began to trace down her cheeks. "I seen on TV that you shouldn't ever admit to doing anything unless your lawyer is present."

"Do you have a lawyer?"

"No."

"If you don't admit you stole those things, you're going to need one."

She swallowed audibly. "Before I admit it, would you put it in writing—legal like—that you won't set the police after me if I do admit it?"

That was a first for Meredith. Without consulting with the store's attorneys, she couldn't be certain that doing so might not later be construed as some sort of written "bribe," or cause some other sort of ramifications. She shook her head. "You're complicating this needlessly, Mrs. Jordan."

The young mother shuddered with fear and doubt, and then she drew a long, shaky breath. "Well, if I was to admit what I did, would you give me your word not to set the police after me?"

"Would you take my word?" Meredith quietly asked.

For a long moment the other woman searched Meredith's face. "Should I?" she asked finally, her voice shaky with terror.

Meredith nodded, her expression soft. "Yes."

Another hesitation, a long, strangled breath, and then a nod that she accepted Meredith's word. "Okay—I— did steal those things."

Glancing over her shoulder at Mark Braden, who had silently opened the door and was watching the scenario, Meredith said, "Mrs. Jordan admits to taking the clothing."

"Fine," he said tonelessly. In his hand was the statement of admission she'd have to sign and he handed it to the forlorn woman, along with a pen.

"You didn't say," she told Meredith, "I'd have to sign a confession."

"When you've signed it, you may leave," Meredith replied with quiet reassurance, and was subjected to another long, searching look by the young woman.

Her hand shook, but she signed it and shoved it back at Mark.

"You can leave, Mrs. Jordan," he said.

She grasped the back of her chair, looking on the verge of relieved collapse, her gaze riveted on Meredith. "Thank you, Miss Bancroft."

"You're welcome." Meredith was already walking down the hall and into the toy department when Sandra Jordan came rushing up behind her. "Miss Bancroft?" When Meredith stopped and turned, she blurted out, "I seen—I mean, I saw you on television news a few times—at fancy places, wearing furs and gowns, and I wanted to say you're a lot prettier even than you look on TV."

"Thank you," Meredith said with a slight, self-conscious smile.

"And I—I wanted you to know, I've never tried to steal anything before either," she added, her eyes pleading with Meredith to believe her. "Here, look," she said, pulling her wallet out of her purse and removing a photograph from it. A baby's tiny face with enormous blue eyes and an enchanting toothless smile gazed back at Meredith. "That's my Jenny," Sandra said, her voice turning somber and tender. "She got real sick last week. The doctor said I have to keep her warmer, but I can't afford the electric bill now. So I figured if she just had warmer clothes—" Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked fiercely. "Jenny's father took off when I got pregnant, but that's okay because me and Jenny—we got each other, and that's all we need. But I couldn't bear it if I—if I lost my Jenny." She opened her mouth as if to say more, then she turned on her heel and fled. Meredith watched her rush down an aisle filled with hundreds of teddy bears, but what she saw was the baby in the photograph, a tiny pink bow in her hair and a cherub's smile on her face.

Minutes later Sandra Jordan was stopped by the security guard at the main door when she tried to leave the store. "Mr. Braden is coming down, Mrs. Jordan," he informed her, and Sandra's whole body began to quake at the horrible realization that she'd undoubtedly been tricked into signing a confession so they could turn her over to the police. She was sure of it when Braden walked up to her carrying a large Bancroft's shopping bag, which she instantly realized contained the pink snowsuit, along with all the other evidence of her attempted theft— including a large teddy bear which she hadn't even touched. "You lied," she cried in a strangled voice as Braden held the bag out to her.

"These things are for you to take home, Mrs. Jordan" he interrupted, his smile brief and impersonal, his tone that of one who was making a speech he'd been told to make. In a daze of gratitude and disbelief, Sandra took the bag with Jenny's warm clothes and a teddy bear in it and clutched it protectively to her chest. "Merry Christmas from all of us at Bancroft & Company," he said flatly, but Sandra knew the gifts weren't from him or a donation from the store either. Lifting her eyes to the mezzanine above, she searched through a blur of tears for a sign of the beautiful young woman who'd looked at Jenny's picture with such poignant gentleness in her smile. She thought she saw her then— Meredith Bancroft standing in her white coat on the mezzanine, smiling down at her. She thought so, but she wasn't sure because scalding tears were flooding her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. "Tell her," she whispered chokily to Braden, "Jenny and I said thank you."